eCommerce SEO: How to Drive Organic Traffic to Your Store

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of the most important strategies in increasing brand impressions and clicks that eventually lead to sales.

Think about yourself as a consumer. When you want to buy a product or service, Google is your best friend. Your time is precious and you aren’t going to waste your energy combing through multiple pages of results.

More often than not, you will gravitate to a site at the top of the results page, and many times it’s the first result that will grab your attention.

Now, think back to yourself as an e-commerce business owner. It is almost heartbreaking how many potential customers you are missing out on if you are not one of those first results on the first page.

This is where SEO comes in. This post will detail some of the best practices to adopt in pursuit of driving organic traffic to your store.

User Intent

What sounds like it is all about the search engine is really about the user experience. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience, and design your e-commerce site revolving around what you would want as a consumer.

Design your site as if search engines didn’t exist and ask yourself: Does this help my consumers? Is this what they were looking for? Avoid deceiving your users, because a misleading headline could cause you to lose a customer.

Three of the most common types of user intent are navigational, transactional, and informational.

Navigational searches are simply an inquiry for a specific website. The user’s search will be simple and straightforward, leading them to the site they were looking for.

When users want to search for a product or service, it is called a transactional search. Transactional searches seek e-commerce sites selling that particular product or service.

Informational searches are exactly what they sound like – a user seeking information. Informational searches are posed as if the user is asking a question to Google, like What is the best hair salon in South Florida?

Knowing the intent of your target audience will help you to determine certain keywords that they are likely to input in a search engine. 

There are plenty of keyword research resources available to help you identify and rank keywords, as well as see your competitors for these keywords.

Organic Traffic

At the top of the search engine results are ads, which are clearly specified. Many consumers choose to bypass these results as organic, unpaid results seem more trustworthy.

Google search results and rankings are constantly changing, meaning that the more active your e-commerce site is, the higher your position will be among search results.

Blog posts have become one of the most popular strategies for businesses wanting to drive organic traffic to their site. 

Bloggers appear to consumers as experts on the subject about which they are writing, even if they have not dedicated their lives to the topic. Investing a few hours of your time to research and write a blog to share information or to answer questions about a specific topic will be worthwhile.

You should post blogs regularly and include the keywords you have identified within the content to be helpful in rankings.

One of the best and perhaps most unique things about blogging, is that it is much more interesting for users to read compared to a typical article. Blogs are meant to be written conversationally for users to read, not search engine robots.

Writing relevant blogs for your company is a free and a relatively easy way to drive content to your store, and you may become an expert on new things along the way.

Double-Dipping with Social Media

If you already have an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account for your business, which you definitely should, don’t be afraid to link out to your blog or any relevant content posted on your e-commerce site. 

With each click, Google will recognize the traffic being sent to your site, thus proving your site to be relevant, useful, and interesting. 

Once you establish yourself as a credible and interesting blogger, your social media followers will look forward to your posts and dedicate time to click and read through them in the future.

If you post blogs frequently, say more than once or twice a week, be wary of linking out to each of them on your social media accounts. You don’t want to oversaturate your profile with wordy blog posts and even more importantly, you don’t want to lose the interest of your followers.

Be Smartphone-Friendly

If you are a smartphone user, you know that there is nothing more frustrating than when you click on a website that only offers a desktop format. Nobody wants to spend time zooming in and out on a website to find what they are looking for and oftentimes, it is much easier to visit a different site that offers a mobile format.

While most of us have been stuck inside during the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home on laptops or desktops, many consumers still prefer to use their phones to conduct searches. This may be because we are so accustomed to using them, or because condensed mobile sites are easier to navigate.

You could be losing business by not having a mobile site, and the good news is that if you already have a website, you can create an adaptive version to be used on mobile devices.

Google knows how many users are on their phones, and having a mobile-friendly site will help with your SEO ranking.

Mobile sites also make it easier for your consumers to contact you. Providing your company’s phone number and email address on your mobile site will allow users to conveniently click to call or email.

 

We know how much hard work you have put into your e-commerce business and website, and it deserves to be visible to potential customers. These are just a few strategies that can help drive organic traffic to your store, and I encourage you to research further. These strategies will provide long-lasting results with an increase in customer traffic.